Five past Midnight in Bhopal
by Dominique Lapierre and Javier Moro
 |
US
edition • UK
edition Dominique
Lapierre& Javier Moro have written a devastating indictment
of Carbide's activities in Bhopal leading up to the gas leak. This
is why the company must be brought to court. Follow the links above
to get straight to the book at Amazon. Part of the royalties go
to medical relief for the gas survivors. See also Dominique's article,
Mercy for the Martyrs of Bhopal! |
Customer reviews from amazon.co.uk
The
story that cried out to be told
27 May, 2002
Reviewer: Indra Sinha (indra.sinha@virgin.net) from Sussex, UK
Dominique Lapiere and Xavier Moro follow in the tradition of Dominique's
"City of Joy" with this skilful telling a story which was in
great danger of being simply forgotten. The Bhopal gas tragedy and its
aftermath are the greatest ever scandal of the corporate world: a chronicle
of staggering negligence crowned by a giant American corporation's utter
indifference for the suffering of its victims. Dominique and Xavier show
how Union Carbide ignored advice not to build a pesticides plant handling
deadly poisons in the middle of a densely populated city, how its sales
miscalculations and subsequent attempts to force its Indian subsidiary
to cut costs led directly to the tragedy in which tens of thousands died
in the most horrifying circumstances. The book brings to life for us the
bastees (slum neighbourhoods) of Bhopal near which the factory was built,
their vibrant life and many of their characters: Gangaram the leper, Pulpul
Singh the moneylender, little Padmini the tribal girl from Orissa whose
wedding took place on what was to become known as "The Night of Gas"
or simply "That Night".
We are also introduced to the people who built and ran the deadly pesticides
plant, and are helped to understand the complex sequence of decisions
and blunders which led year by year, week by week and finally, minute
by minute, toward catastrophe. As a result we feel the full horror of
what happened at midnight on 2 December 1984, as cocktails of deadly gases
began drifting in clouds through the densely populated city lanes, killing
some ten to twenty thousand immediately (many of them with eyes and mouths
on fire, drowning terrified in their own body fluids), leaving behind
more than half a million injured. How the hospitals of Bhopal were crowded
with Carbide's refugees, thousands of poor people, some coughing up their
lungs, others rendered incontinent by the poisons with faeces and urine
running down their legs. You would think that such people, who were innocently
leading their lives and had done nothing to deserve this hideous punishment,
should by now (eighteen years after the disaster) have been handsomely
compensated, and given effective medical treatment. Yet for the majority
of gas victims nothing has been done. In their Epilogue Dominique and
Xavier show how virtually from day one, Carbide began trying to evade
responsibility for its actions. How, to exculpate itself, it invented
a "sabotage" theory (a shameful piece of PR, entirely invented
and several times discredited and disproved yet in which it still persists).
They show how Carbide (now merged into Dow) manipulated legal systems,
judges and governments with shameless cynicism and has so far managed
to evade justice. Meanwhile, its half a million victims, among them some
of the poorest people on the planet, have been denied proper compensation
and medical care. To this day the company has never said exactly what
gases leaked, and one reason for that is that it has never appeared in
court (Union Carbide is officially a "fugitive from justice"
in India having failed to turn up to answer charges in the Bhopal court),
it has never been compelled to face questioning under oath, and the evidence
related to the world's worst ever chemical disaster has to this day never
been publicly heard. This book will open people's eyes to the reality
of what unchecked and unaccountable corporate power means. It is a very
important text. It must be read.
A
thoroughly engaging and fascinating book
7 June, 2002
Reviewer: (kaustav@kaustav.uk.com) from London, UK
The Union Carbide disaster was truly a grave tragedy of the modern industrialised
world. Lapierre presents the events which lead up the disaster of 3rd
December 1984 with in-depth detail. His description of the chemical processes,
the reasoning behind where the factory was located and the political wrangling
which went on before and after the factory was established gives the reader
a broad insight in to events leading up to the disaster. Lapierre describes
in vivid detail both how Carbide, as a company, insisted on high standards,
yet failed to carry through their own doctrines on safety and let the
factory in Bhopal fall apart. Lapierre continues to revealing Carbide's
own problems with their factory in Charleston, Carolina where similar
smaller scale leaks caused human damage and death. The pictures contained
in the book are in places shocking and reveal the true extent to human
suffering caused by the deadly gases expelled from the factory in Bhopal.
What really lifts this book up is the description of the villagers from
the various "bustee's" around the factory sight. You really
begin to know each one of the characters and at times the pivotal roles
they played amongst the villages. A tragic reality which the book reveals
is how the west exploit, even today, the developing countries and use
them as testing grounds for some of the most destructive and dangerous
substances known to man. Even after the Carbide disaster, almost immediately
afterwards, the next pesticide marketing campaign kicked off showing that
the cost of human life in India is often regarded as negligible by so
many foreign investors and firms. I have found some of Lapierre's previous
works rather repetitive but I must hand it to him with this book. He has
written a magnificent account of events in the Bhopal disaster and I would
highly recommend it to anyone even remotely interested in what is one
of the worst chemical disasters the world has ever seen.
